by Brown, Rex
I got really fucking sick one night in Atlanta touring Far Beyond Driven, but it had nothing to do with alcohol. I had strep throat with a hundred and four degree fever and we were playing a place that must have been a hundred and twenty degrees. It was all I could do to just stand up. I was in the hospital before the show, got up, played the show, and went straight into an ambulance back to the hospital; that’s how sick I was and still we only cut the show short by fifteen minutes. That was the only stage time I ever missed.
MY DRINKS OF CHOICE were beer and whiskey—although in later years I took a liking to red wine—and there would be nights where my bass tech would have a trash can at my side of the stage, just in case. Sometimes, I’d think, “Fuck it, Goddamn, I’ve got to catch up,” so I’d drink another beer real fast just before we went on and so the trash can was there so I could fucking chunk if I had to. And then I’d have another shot and be fine.
This was all Jeff’s job, as well as changing all the strings on the basses, making sure that all my amps are powered, all the hook-ups set up and the whole bit. And of course he kept my mini-bar stocked. I usually took about six basses on stage at a time and all I had to do was take the guitar I was playing off my shoulder, he’d hand me another, switch the wireless packs over, and I was good to go. Depending on where you’re playing, guitars and basses go out of tune a lot. If you’re playing in a fucking hockey rink—and we played in a lot of them—where they just board up the ice, it could be really cold and Jeff would be tuning my basses all night long. And if the venue’s really humid the bass necks would seem to bend.
WE WENT TO AUSTRALIA in late ’96 and the process of getting there was a complete nightmare. Vinnie, Dime, and the rest had already gone on before us, so I was scheduled to fly out with Phil, his assistant, and Big Val. So I get to LAX and in those days we had fans everywhere, so someone at the airport would always recognize me, shoot me into a little buggy, and say, “So, Mr. Brown, where would you like to go?”
On this occasion they put me and Big Val in a buggy and took us to one of these waiting lounges called something like the Admiral’s Club. We walk in there and I see Phil sitting with the comedian Don Rickles. So for the next couple of hours before we fly, he sits and gets scotch drunk with Don as our pre-flight entertainment. You can’t even imagine the crazy shit that was coming out of his mouth. I wasn’t drinking at the time, but Big Val had a shitload of Valium on him.
Predictably, by the time we got to our first class seats on Qantas Airlines, Phil was completely wasted. It was very high-end—champagne and caviar for the whole trip—and Phil’s looking around, panicking that we’re not sitting together and the whole bit. I asked some guy if he would move, but he just had to have his fucking window seat or something, so I just said, ‘“No big deal, I’ll just sit wherever I’ve been assigned.” I was just trying to be nice, but this guy was being a real fucking asshole about it for whatever reason.
Then Phil says to him, “You know what, you’re a fucking dick” and that just escalated things, and Phil started to become all paranoid thinking everyone was looking at him. “Fuck you, don’t look at me, fuck you, don’t look at me!” he’d say to everyone. Then he wanted to get his Walkman or something to use during the flight and they wouldn’t let him get into his luggage. “Settle down, dude,” I told him, “It’s really not that big of a deal.”
Phil had a history of being a handful on flights. We’d fly places and he’d kind of nod out, face down in his food. That happened all the time. So, I’d grab his head. “What the fuck are you doing?” he’d say. “Dude, I’m tired of looking at you with your face in a plate,” I’d tell him.
Meanwhile, downstairs in coach class, Big Val was throwing a fucking commotion about something—he couldn’t find his headphones or his seat wasn’t big enough, some stupid shit like that—so they ended up throwing us all off the plane. They got the cops in LAX to come and get us and the whole bit.
Back in the terminal we had to go all the way back through security. I had to put a call in to someone who could think of something fast that would get us out of this mess, but Sykes and them were already Down Under. I didn’t know who I could call. So as we’re going back through the security line, they find all this Valium on Big Val; they detained him and escorted us out of there. But Phil and I still had to find a way to get on another flight.
We had to get all the way across LAX—and it’s a huge fucking airport. We could see the United Airlines terminal straight across from where we were dumped off, but it was going to take forever to get all the way over there in a cab.
So we just started hauling ass across this field in the middle of LAX—it was probably part of the goddamn runway, who knows, and Phil didn’t have a suitcase either. He had everything in fucking boxes. For some reason that’s how he liked to do it, and it should be said that Phil is pretty eccentric in that respect. And he always had problems with luggage. On what seemed like every trip, everybody else’s bag would get through, but Phil’s wouldn’t show up. So he would just throw a fucking fit. I’m philosophical about that kind of thing, so I used to say to him, “Come on man, you’re still breathing. It’s not the end of the world.” So from then on he started taking boxes and carry-on shit.
I didn’t question it at this point either, I just thought, “You want to do your shit in boxes, do it in boxes. Fuck it.”
So I’m trying to carry his shit as well as my bags, and by the time we get to the United desk we’re both just covered with sweat. Not just that, I’d snapped a fingernail in half carrying Phil’s stuff, but because it was my right hand, I could tape it up and it wouldn’t be a problem for when I had to play a bass.
So we finally get booked on this plane in roach class but the problem was that it was going to fucking New Zealand and not Australia. When we get there, after too many hours of traveling, we find out that U.S. Customs had called New Zealand Customs, presumably to have us checked out for carrying drugs.
Now by this point I’m fucking pissed. I’d flown double-digit hours to the wrong country in coach class, when I could have been living in seventeen hours of luxury in a full-blown champagne and caviar wet dream that was pure intoxication.
That was a fantasy.
The reality was different. They took us into a room at the airport in New Zealand and stripped us fucking nude.
And it was a full strip search, rubber gloves up the ass and the whole bit. Phil and I weren’t carrying, so there wasn’t a problem for us. Big Val had all the Valium on him, and he was probably still detained at LAX!
After another short flight from New Zealand, we finally got to our hotel in Australia. I called Vince and said, “Fuck Val, he’s fired, man.”
I thought he should have handled the situation better—that’s what we pay him to do—but Vinnie wanted him (a) because he hated confrontation of any kind and (b) because he needed a security guard. He was right about the second part, probably. We all needed a security guard when it came to controlling the crowd at shows, and Val was admittedly really good at that. Although he flew out a couple of days later, nobody really spoke to him and this was the beginning of the end for Big Val. He was starting to think he was a bigger rock star than us.
DESPITE THESE PROBLEMS, I liked Australia as a place to visit, but it seemed like their economy was always in the shitter, almost to the extent that it cost us money to go and play there, even though we knew we’d most likely get it all back in future record sales. But we just felt that if we were going to be over on that side of the world, we might as well hit everywhere we could, so that included New Zealand, Australia, Japan, and also wilder places like Seoul, Korea.
THERE WAS A NEAR-RIOT at one of the gigs we played in Australia. We came out after a show in Sydney and the fans were all over this parking garage outside. There were thousands of people. It was fucking insane. Should have made a video out of it, that’s how killer it was. Apparently they’d charged at a barricade fence, knocked it over, and spilled into this parki
ng lot, just to get closer to us.
JEFF JUDD
We were in Japan on the Trendkill tour and we found this toy store that was six stories tall. Bobby, a band assistant, and I go in there and we buy these battery BB guns that shoot plastic pellets. We go back to Rex and the guys and they said, “We gotta have us a war here with these guns.” We had an entire floor of the Hilton, so we get these things charging and go to dinner. After we got back after a few drinks, we pick these guns up and Rex fires the first shot at a beer can that was sitting on the counter and this thing splits the can in half. We were like, “All right, this is not a game anymore.” Then Dime starts shooting out all the wine glasses in the wine bar that served the floor of our hotel, then the pictures get riddled up, then all the light bulbs got shot out. There was glass everywhere. By the morning, all our bedrooms are shot up. I’ll never forget Dime calling down to the front desk, putting on a Japanese accent asking for light bulbs. The guy at the desk asked him what kind he meant, and at that point Dime said in his Texas accent, “Goddamn hundred-watters son, they look better when they blow!” So, they sent someone up and Dime wouldn’t let them in the room because of all the damage. The final total on all of it ended up being about seventeen thousand dollars, and it ended up being a big deal as well as a big disrespectful thing there. The promoter—the same guy who first brought the Beatles to Japan—ended up having to write a letter to the consulate and we were banned from every Hilton in Japan.
TOURING TRENDKILL was a fucking blur, man, a total blur. On the way back from wherever we were last—maybe Japan—we stopped off for a break in Maui. We often did this kind of thing on the way back from overseas trips, and Hawaii was a favorite of mine because I’d proposed to Belinda there back in ’94 and I loved surfing.
We were meant to stay there for seven days and the wives were going to come out and join us for some of that time, but me and Dime ended up staying there for two and a half weeks. We had rented cars but never used them; we just stayed at the hotel. They had shuttles to little islands, and Dime and I made our own little spot on the beach and sat there chilling. We’d get up at about one and have a drink and a sandwich or whatever. It was a perfect escape.
SOMETIME DURING ALL THIS, Jerry Cantrell had sent me a tape of about eleven songs that he wanted me to play on. Me, him, and Sean Kinney, and my first thought was, “Yeah, this is exactly what I need.”
Here was a chance to broaden my horizons a little bit while also getting away from all the Pantera band issues. Of course I’d known Jerry since ’87 and was a huge Alice in Chains fan, so I went up to Sausalito, California, for about a month, rehearsed, came home, and then went back there to record a bunch of tracks which were going to be produced by Toby Wright, who’d worked on a couple of Alice in Chains records.
Well, it wasn’t long before I got into a fight with Toby.
He’d keep saying shit like, “Oh, you can’t play it like that,” to which I replied “Dude, Jerry invited me down to play so I’m going to play whatever the fuck I want to, understand?”
Scotty Olson was Toby’s engineer on the project, and he’s just a sweetheart of a guy—he played guitar in Heart for years—and he made me feel comfortable because he’d worked with our producer Terry Date in the past. So because I felt like he was an ally, my attitude to Toby was very much like, “If you don’t like it, get the fuck out of the room. I’m going to lay my shit down and that’s the way it’s going to go.”
Amazingly, Toby Wright still calls me from time to time saying stuff like, “Hey man, I’m looking for a gig.”
“You’re a piece of shit,” is about all I’ll offer in reply.
Jerry was in no position at that point either due to his excessive drug use. Without going into too much detail, let’s just say I would go past his place from time to time and see his dog chained up with no food in the bowl for three fucking days, and that indicated to me that maybe something was seriously wrong. It felt like I was leaving one for another. Crazy shit.
CHAPTER 14
THE ’TUDE
The Toby Wright fiasco was an example of the scrappy character I’d been since I was a kid. Yes, I could handle myself if I had to, but I’d also developed a really strong bark and that was almost always enough to get people to back down. I nurtured that as I got older to the point that whenever I walked into a room, I did so as if to say, “This is my room,” no questions asked. Dime, Phil, and I were all like that in our different ways. Whenever we walked into a room our presence was noted. Duly noted. We were united and you did not fuck with us.
As a general principle, I guarantee that when I first walk into a room I can set the tone for whatever the outcome’s going to be, just by changing the expression on my face. When I walk in I make sure that everybody knows it’s my room and you don’t fuck with me, and then after that we start talking like any normal people. Of course I’ll always show manners and respect, but at that initial point of entry, it’s as if I’m walking in there as part of a street gang. We wanted people to think, “Here’s these crazy fuckers from Texas. They drink a shitload of booze and they’ll kick your fucking ass.” Even though me and Dime were tiny in physical stature, we more than made up for it in attitude.
It might surprise you to know that this attitude is more important to me than going up onstage and hitting a lick. I’m serious. It shows who you are more than anything. If you walk in there all smiley or all scared, people just will not take you seriously and you will lose any argument or negotiation before it even starts. Consequently, I’ve never been starstruck in my entire life. I can’t afford to do that. It would put me in a position of weakness, and since childhood I haven’t liked that place.
At times it has not been easy to not be fazed by certain scenarios, because throughout my career I’ve been in situations that even I think are pretty fucking cool, like hanging out with Ozzy, smoking a joint and the whole bit. Had people calling me on the phone that you just wouldn’t expect, and these are guys that I’ve idolized, worshipped even, since I was a kid. I got the chance to meet Jimmy Page in London once, and beforehand I didn’t even want to meet him—what if he turned out to be a total tool? I just didn’t want to know that. But it did make me think about how I am when people come up to me. Let’s say I’m in a bad mood—a little irritated maybe—and then when people come up to me, maybe they want to know if I’m a total tool. That really made me think about other people’s perception of me because I realized that strangers probably have a certain level of expectation about how I am. Unfortunately a lot of people in the public eye get reputations for being assholes, so my thinking was always to surprise them by showing that I’m not, rather than confirming their preconceived suspicion that I am.
That’s not always easy though because I come from the old school of rock ’n’ roll, which involves trying to live just like Keith Richards. Lots of guys in this business try to do that. Slash, Nikki Sixx, they all fought hard to emulate Keith, but by their own admission they never got there. I still have that vision in my brain, but I’ve got to get rid of it because, as you’ll find out later, I can’t drink anymore, which kind of defeats the point. In any case, if you read Keith’s book you’ll see that it’s not like he went out and partied every night for his entire career either. He didn’t do that. He knew how to balance his life and that’s probably why he’s still playing at sixty-something years old.
THE PRESS WANTED to give Dime this whole certain aura after his death, but really that was an old wive’s tale. He was a charismatic guy, no doubt about it, but one who could make you feel like you’re the most amazing person on the planet, just by being in his company. He entertained himself by doing crazy shit and by getting you to do crazy shit, too, but you couldn’t help but just love the cat, even though he pissed me off so many times that I can’t even count.
Darrell was always the culprit of practical jokes, and with him the camera was always on while they played out, so it’s no wonder we made three home videos of crazy shit
and the fans bought it. In fact a lot of times the fans were in them.
To relieve tedium while we were on the road, Darrell would always come up with something: cards, dice, or shooting fireworks under somebody in a moving vehicle, so there was never a dull moment.
We even drove the bus a few times to relieve the boredom, and I wasn’t always in great shape behind the wheel when I did it. The bus driver would sit and get smashed with Dime in the back regularly, so somebody had to steer the ship, and I often drove the bus from one town to the next.
WALTER O’BRIEN
When it came to making the home videos, Dime thought he could direct. I knew he couldn’t. Also, some of the stuff he had in there was outrageous—material he had because he kept the camera rolling backstage. There were acts involving Heineken bottles that you just wouldn’t believe. It was basically pornography. I used to say to him, “Look, I know that you think this is funny and these incidents really do happen but Warner Brothers are not in the business of selling hardcore pornography.” Did he get it? Of course not.
Our profile was boosted further—if that’s possible—in ’97 when we were invited on the Ozzfest tour—its first proper year—and that was the beginning of a great relationship with Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne. We were the biggest metal band out there at the time, so what were they going to do? It was obvious what they had to do: Get Pantera on the bill.
Ozzfest had to pay. If they were going to do this thing, it had to be successful.
WALTER O’BRIEN
Ozzy was always out there touring and he always had a tradition of putting out younger bands to open for him, incredibly sensible marketing on his part. We kept trying to hound them and hound them to take us out, as did every manager of every other heavy metal band in the world. We tried and tried, and then finally Sharon said, “Because so many bands are always trying to tour with us, we’re going to do Ozzfest, then that way we can take a bunch of them out and call it a festival.” So they took us out and afterwards I made a point of sending her a thank you letter. One day when I was on the phone with her a few weeks later she said, “I have to tell you something. Your letter is on the wall above my computer in my office.” I said, “That’s tremendous; I’m really honored, but why?” And she said, “Ozzy saw it and he said ‘In all my years of bringing out young groups, this is the first time any manager thought to send us a letter of thanks.’” I’m not going to say that they got the Ozzfest slots because of that letter, but it certainly didn’t hurt, let’s put it that way. I don’t think Ozzy could have gotten away with touring every year for seven straight years without something like Ozzfest to carry it.